here is where the gold is found from here on down and. sometimes it is of interest sometimes not. because the concentration is. what really interests this is this the. five hundred meters under the surface of the earth the atmosphere is us fixating heat humidity and thick dust make it hard to breathe. level eighteen is the deepest you can get. from levels one thousand to forty four everything is flooded half the mine is under water and dozens of pumps are trying to pull the water up to the surface. even in this state however. produces about

seven kilos of gold a month. this is considered to be a typical global gold the pause at the end at the present moment is one of the best in colombia. gold is the barometer of fear. in the midst of the two thousand and eleven coble economic crisis on the twenty second of august it hit a historic high of one thousand eight hundred eighty nine dollars an ounce. an almost unbelievable price considering that ten years ago this much gold cost

only two hundred seventy one dollars. today colombia is one of the countries with the largest gold production in south america and one of the most important gold producers in the world. in two thousand and ten it produced approximately fifty four tons while it is estimated that there are still enormous unexplored reserves because of. geological knowledge of the country is still limited. but according to research of national interest me talking about forty one thousand tons of gold buried all that's. been on all of these can be developed it with. colombia is suffering from gold rush fever. in no other country of the world is this happening in a more intense way.

there are people here who have come from all over the country not just from one of insurer but from the entire country but that is because gold is money its wealth its peace for the family it's food. how life has changed one hundred percent at least for me the mind has changed my life one hundred percent because before i lived next to the national road. and at the moment of what i see them and now i have a house in one of and tura and now i don't depend on the government to send me five thousand pesos instead of them sending it i got to find gold and many times i earn over one hundred thousand pesos. is a lot so this is what we look for the minute they chase us away. hunger will hit

one of ventura what will come everything will come.

there are much bigger players beyond the ordinary gold diggers trying to survive. drawn by the high prices of gold they claim the lion's share of the country's legendary gold bearing deposits. they are made up of the multinationals and the government the guerrillas the former paramilitaries and the drug cartels. the hunt for gold in colombia along with cocaine fuels the country's civil war which has been raging for over forty years.

my motto is a gold mining town. it resembles a building site choked with noise and dust. lorries motorcycles and donkeys loaded with people and metal oars jostle each other in the narrow streets. buckets fly over the residence bringing down the precious earth from the minds of the mountain. mills work around the clock. grey waterfalls rushed down its slopes with water polluted by cyanide the waste product of processing poisoning the

reverse. is a rich yet filthy place hundreds of generations have dug up the ground here the first being the indigenous peoples of the pre-columbian period the spanish and slave them and put them to work in dark passages my motto is one of the oldest gold mining sites in south america. or was the for the oldest municipality in the country it was established in fifteen thirty six traditionally it has been a mining town. it is no exaggeration but the ten thousand citizens of this region live on top of a golden mountain. here on elbow estimates say that approximately nine point eight million ounces of the precious metal is hidden within its bowels.

almost everyone here is from a family of gold diggers. people trying to make a living surviving as their ancestors did by digging with chisels and pickaxes deep into the earth. this is the oil we look for in the mine and it has pyrite in it and everything here in the mine you can't see it but when it goes through the mill then the gold comes out. ruben is the owner of this mine along with thirty eight of his fellow countryman. he provides employment to forty five families. there are four hundred fifty mines and. some legal some illegal. our tradition is to become miners and we

always like the money our work in the mines earns us money my wages are three hundred sixty thousand every fifteen days we live on this me and my wife thank god since we are poor we live well on this. but also my brother are involved in the mines. yet it has never and since i started working in the mine i stayed here ok. thank you luckily. lisa leach. leg.

length. leg. leg. length. leg . lifts.

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my motto did not go unnoticed by the big multinational companies such as canada's gran colombia gold and its subsidiary madore resources. your me and my name is jose oro and i am vice president of the company it honestly i have a commitment to the people to development for me this plan and my motto is very important because we must create jobs to give food to the people and and this is part of our duty and our ethics yes with the city and we're going to do it you in.

the company's plan is to blow up the top of the gold mountain and create an open pit mine in order to have access to all the deposits from the top to the very bottom. in this way annual gold production could be as much as eight tons rather than the seven hundred twenty six kilos currently produced. according to today's price this would be worth about five hundred million dollars.

it would not be worth doing this is one of the alternative techniques you know who we are to but it could become an open pit mine very beautiful very modern. polling current and future environmental laws it's not that we're opening an enormous hole which looks like a giant volcano he picked it we were working plot by plugging in restoring as we go along because. there are parts which can't be restored well so there we make a nice little lake and add some fish when most other places we fix up with rock in the us a road is created for endangered species to pass through the bases. in other words you must have alternatives and be creative.

when i have a pit mines the holes a gigantic what those holes four hundred to one thousand one hundred meters deep which cover a large area is. what made you have when i open a hole i think i must make an artificial mountain after brain of pollutants and see that if it's raining a last thing the illusion will spread to a much greater area. you have which are your and many aquatic ecosystems rivers lakes will be destroyed. and if i think that in this country gold medal has an environmental cost which is unacceptable. but in order for the company's plan to be implemented the town of moore motto which was declared in one thousand nine hundred two a national historic site of columbia must be a raced from the map. and where we can remove the tell must be moved we must move the town this is something very typical in metallurgy moody and.

i'm seventy years old with it why should i leave here there is no one chasing me out. to live this down it doesn't just have material wealth like gold and silver but yet. for us it symbolizes a lot just get bored and we don't believe that for the economic ambitions of people who aren't even colombians we should disappear so they can come to mine the gold killing a town which has survived with. it as a baby. and when. it goes from there are people who are indigenous who are confused politically because they have been told that capitalism is coming and will destroy them above

all we can't have a dialogue with the deaf. and. it's exactly like that it's a struggle of capital that capitalism will look at but against a people that do nothing else except work and contribute to the state let's get on with the multinationals do their work. without leaving the country anything. i think that when we must take into consideration that mining development that it does represents two percent of the g.d.p. number there and if we're talking about resources it's important previn us from foreign investments are important but even if. you don't. and so exports support us units which bring revenues to the state. and allow the funding of programs for poverty but. everything is not of

a balancing act. in this mean where in two thousand and nine state revenues from metallurgy well one point nine three billion pesos basis. tax breaks were one point seven five and fuel subsidies point two four billion. profits were less than the tax breaks and subsidies anything that's given to the mining corporations so how much money is left over and. why develop the creation of an open pit mine and not prove the conditions for miners. it would come in because it's slow economically rimmel it's a question of cost it's a fantasy you're both. because you know what's happening. let's say we improve the conditions of small miners and they produce that one thousand two hundred dollars an ounce. when the prices fall it's all over. so

they're like sleeping. in it once they see good mates when they attack. this happened but if they came to the gold towns to work saying they contribute to sustainable development they need and this sustainable development has destroyed towns and peoples i think the problem is we must talk to the people here we should have the direct presence of high level executives to be able to sort of baptize a kid one day so that we can say we love them look at you because our god made us all equal. because we should begin humanitarian work. and if they say no. new york times that no they'll accept will except logic is always imposed some of them will be more difficult than others. and some might even go to extremes. if they don't accept then the laws of colombia must be

applied. else again operating in eight hundred fifty two. it was the year that the british company frontino gold mines was the stablished in the area bringing with it the steam engine and the telegraph. the workers of the company built their accommodation close to the mine creating a new town said go via. today said go via has a population of forty thousand. it is

a lively hot dirty and dangerous town. to go via lives by the rhythms of hundreds of metal mills operating nonstop. it is filled with casinos bars prostitutes and dozens of gold shops. much gold goes through your shop every day. hey. from five hundred to fifteen hundred grams to. see how much is that in terms of money. then.

fifty thousand dollars or about one hundred million pace us. seventy five percent of the gold in colombia is produced in this area. you. want.

to go you know if it was to go via has been built on one of the largest natural resources of latin america you think of the local one but if it is considered one of the largest gold reserves in south america. let's go to the state has long abandoned at the moon but. also companies didn't help society here at all with road building this is the supply of water education i mean anything. with a. i

took. six dollars. on oh i know the guys who were going to load the experience before sneering words on the card. for my most fearful service. so. we forced to ship. nations the foreign policy. they only used to make.

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